All of us had at least one moment in our childhood where we made a mistake. No, not a mistake. A critical, life-threatening error in judgement. We didn’t know it at the time. As soon as our parents discovered that we had given the family pet a haircut, turned the house into a swimming pool, or lit our sibling on fire, we figured it out. Their eyes grew impossibly wide before vanishing into slits. We heard the intake of breath as they swelled up and towered above us. And from the depths of this thing- our lifelong protector turned embodiment of rage- came forth a roar that rivaled the thunder of Zeuss himself:

“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?”

Remember that moment. Close your eyes and return to it. Do you recall the timbre of those damning tones? Do you shiver in remembered terror? Good. Now read on.

“NORTON, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?”

You have spit upon not only my childhood memories but my adult profession as well. You created this bastardization of nostalgia and marketing. A twisted horror that mocks all that I have lived for in my 26 years on this planet. This is not an error in judgement. This is not an ill-advised experiment. This is a mutation, a blight, a physical scar upon the very concept of decency itself.

I hope the sniveling, idiotic, fool responsible for this has already changed their name, address, and gender. It won’t stop me from finding them. But it will draw out my revenge.

Because I am coming for you. And when I find you, I will perpetrate such horrors upon you as to cause a Guantanamo Inquisitor to shudder and reach for his “idea journal”. Your end will not be swift. It will not be silent. It will not be clean.

I don’t know how you sleep at night. I hope it is with the fevered nightmares of a man who knows he has murdered the memories of children, and the waning respectability of an entire profession. I suggest you pray for a crushing death beneath a falling pallet of the very horrors you helped create. It will be kinder than what I do to you.